Like Research in Motion, Nokia is playing catch-up, software-wise, to the iPhone OS and Android, which is funny in a cruel way because both Nokia and RIM have a far larger market share than both of them. Nokia has put out a preview video of their upcoming N8 smartphone, which runs the latest Symbian version, Symbian^3. Nokia, like RIM, has got work to do.

No, they aren't. N97 sucked big time. Even Nokia has admitted as much.

And corrected with both the N97 mini and updates to the N97.

They are rapidly losing market share, and years after iPhone's launch they do not have a competitive product. I like Noika, they are very up front and honest about their products. But, you can't blame their honesty for their crappy products right now.

Since Nokia had such a headstart compared to other mobile platforms, their market share in percents can only slowly decrease till it stabilises.

However, one should not forget that not only are they still selling more smartphone than any other competitor, their increase in smartphone sales year over year have also been bigger than those of any competitor, including the Iphone and Android, who both started from noting quite recently and still can't match the increase in smartphone sales Nokia sees.

For example, the paltry 40 millions Iphone units sold on an average year means Apple will never be able to catch up with the number of Symbian devices Nokia ships each year. And that's not even including cheap phones.

If you want to be difficult and argue things that don't matter much, go ahead, but I'm not going to argue back. The important point that was originally argued, is that Nokia phones suck. They promise they will be better in two years time, but they still suck. Absolutely no one would consider buying a n97 over an iphone or high quality droid. And its going to be a while before they have anything that would compete with either platform.

If you want to be difficult and argue things that don't matter much, go ahead, but I'm not going to argue back. The important point that was originally argued, is that Nokia phones suck. They promise they will be better in two years time, but they still suck.

Over-generalization spotted.

First because s40 phones are still an excellent low-end phone experience. Sony are pretty much on par with it. LG lags years behind in terms of usability and features since they went touchscreen and completely messed up their UI while doing so.

They got only recently beaten, in my opinion, and it's by samsung's new touchscreen phones. Their OS is pretty, snappy, and looks just right from an usability and feature set point of view : it does the job, does it well, and makes it easy to do (couldn't test the other aspects, but it really impressed me in terms of straightforward UI and ease of use. That's what any low-end touchscreen phone should look like).

Then, you forget about the wideness of their audience : unlike brands like Apple who got a very specific target (rich people who want a nice toy to play with), or HTC which decided to focus on business, Nokia's mid-end phones cover an incredible amount of use cases. Two areas where Nokia shines :

-> A small phone (without touchscreen) that takes good pictures, in order to replace an average camera by something which makes call and sends and receives texts and mails : the N82/N85/N86/N96 line of product. It only had a sony phone as a contender last time I checked, and reviewers were somewhat critical about its picture quality.
-> Blackberry-like messaging + pda phones : The Eseries work fairly well, and prove to be a strong contender to the Blackberry world, without the whole creepiness of Blackberry's user jailing (Blackberry enterprise server, only apps coming from the App world, several functions that only work nicely between blackberries...)

You can then argue that Nokia doesn't know how to make touchscreen-oriented software. That's somewhat true : last time I checked, reviewers were pretty happy about the 5800 and its successor, but it doesn't match the wide range of touchscreen phones that has appeared nowadays. Then there's the whole feature+app thing : Nokia more or less invented the MID concept before Apple started to make heavy sales based on that concept, and with the N900 they still do pretty well in that area as far as I have heard.

But they don't have a complete line of products that matches the competition in that hyped to death area, you're right. Only parts of it. It's still incomplete. Then, saying "Nokia phones suck" is pretty much saying that this tiny area in the phone market pretty much sums up the entire mobile world. Doesn't this sound a little excessive ?

Absolutely no one would consider buying a n97 over an iphone or high quality droid.

Actually tens of million of people do. Nokia actually sells more smartphones than Android and iPhone combined. The n97 is a very popular phone. It has longer battery life than any Android or iPhone, had a good keyboard, a good camery, its battery can be changed and it has many other advantages over Android and iPhone. It sells very well, even though the iPhone and Android phones are available and competing. Your taste is not everybody's taste.

If you want to be difficult and argue things that don't matter much, go ahead, but I'm not going to argue back.

Then what was the point in you spreading misinformation? If you just want to spread your opinion, that's perfectly acceptable, but make up false information to supposedly back it up and you'll be called for it.

The important point that was originally argued, is that Nokia phones suck. They promise they will be better in two years time, but they still suck.

Your opinion, just don't buy a Nokia.

Absolutely no one would consider buying a n97 over an iphone or high quality droid. And its going to be a while before they have anything that would compete with either platform.

There you lost it again. More people consider a Nokia and buy it than there are people considering an Iphone and buying it. Fact is, Iphone and Android don't even start to compete with Nokia (and to a certain extend SE) on points that matter to a lot of people. It's life, get over it.

I agree that Nokia phones suck (especially the 700i) as you put it. However, they are far, far better than the Sony/Erricsson crap one that I'm forced to use for work.
You know the one that you can't turn off predictive texting...
As for the UI! Well, a four year old could probably make a better job of it.

For personal use I have an Android one. I do however find it worse (from a UI perspective) than the iPhone I had before.
I really miss a few of the Apps that were available on the iPhone but not for New one so I unlocked the iPhone last week and now use the SIM from the Android in it.